Recording is a core component of many web conferencing systems as it provides an asynchronous access to the content and proceedings of a meeting. High level usage scenarios include:                1. creating training material (prepared presentations) for reuse or broad distribution;        2. preserving material and context for an absent attendee;        3. archiving for offline note-taking or preserving discussions; and        4. archiving content for compliance with various rules and laws.        
The fundamental principle currently driving the investment in recordings is the notion that the meeting content and discussions have value far beyond the meeting.
The components of a typical recording system are generally the same and include a capture process that captures meeting proceedings. It also includes a publishing process that converts the captured data into a format that can be rendered readily by a playback application. The playback application renders the published data and ideally imposes minimum system requirements to achieve greatest reach. Besides the capture process, the publishing process and the playback process, a typical recording system also includes a content management system to access and manage recordings. Finally, some recording systems include an editor that enables post processing for error correction of the content or overall fit and finish.
Many previous meeting recording systems suffer from various drawbacks. They are often difficult to set up and use, requiring much manual effort to effectively capture and playback meeting data. The recordings additionally do not lend themselves to readily being searched and they cannot be split out to play back only certain tracks of data. Additionally, proprietary software is often needed to playback the recorded data which makes broad distribution and play back of the recorded data difficult.